Thursday, July 30, 2015

Okay, so I
have a few bones to pick with this episode.
First of all, the fact that the little boy Owen and his father sought
refuge in their tent during the storm that signaled the creation of
Storybrooke. The stupidity of this is
highlighted when we see their campsite the following morning. A tree trunk had fallen onto their car,
people! It was entirely possible another
tree could have fallen on their tent and killed them instantly. After all, they were in the middle of the
woods, surrounded by trees. Don’t these
people know that being under a tree is a horrible place to be in a storm? Also, Regina seemed to acclimate herself in
the modern world pretty quickly. No
culture shock moment at all! We didn’t
even get to see her react to the differences in clothing styles or food. Did the curse just fill her head with
everything she needed to know about the modern world? Finally, this episode brings up a question I
had earlier. What exactly kept outsiders
from stumbling across Storybrooke? While
I get that Regina placed a cloaking spell over the town that kept outsiders from seeing the Welcome to Storybrooke sign , what exactly
would have happened if Owen had tried to cross the invisible town line? While I know Emma was able to cross the town
line back in the pilot episode and August/Pinocchio was able to do the same in
‘True North.’ it’s entirely possible
the fact that they were both born/brought to life in the Enchanted Forest gave
them a free pass. But Owen was just a
normal little boy from our world. Could he have found
Storybrooke again if he’d just taken a few steps further? Would he have been physically pushed
back? Would he instantly get
vaporized? Was the area surrounding
Storybrooke some sort of land-based Bermuda Triangle? How many people have wound up on the missing persons
list because they happened to drive down that road during the 28 years the
curse was in effect? You’d think that
sooner or later, people would start to think ‘hey!’

Wow, we
actually get wisdom from Mr. Gold! Whodathunk? Too bad Regina refused to listen to him,
because he was 100% right in this case.
Regina had enacted an entire curse for the sake of revenge, and it
didn’t bring her any lasting satisfaction.
In fact, it clearly got extremely repetitive, as everyone was stuck in
some sort of Groundhog Day loop. You’d
think that going through that would have gotten her to learn her lesson. But nope, she wants to go down the whole
vengeance route again. What’s it going
to take to get this woman acquainted with the reality stick?

Of course,
we also get this episode’s ‘twist.’ Greg
Mendel is the little boy, Owen! Yeah,
that’s not too big of a surprise, as there were a few hints. For instance, we see Owen had a Return of the
Jedi blanket, and Greg Mendel’s ringtone was obviously the Star Wars theme. While that is a vague clue, as Star Wars has
a big fanbase, why would they introduce this little boy without having him be important? Seeing this backstory does make you
sympathize with him, as he clearly wants to find out what happened to his dad,
but the methods he utilizes in the next few episodes? Yeeck.

So, was
meeting Own what first put the idea of adopting a son into Regina’s head? At the same time, it was pretty dumb of her to invite Owen and his dad to stay in Storybrooke. We’ve already established that the town is in
some sort of Groundhog Day loop. The
curse is not going to keep them from noticing that, Regina. After all, Henry clearly did, which is what
ultimately led him to go looking for Emma in the first place.

There were
plenty of other major head-smack moments in this episode as well. First, we find out that bolt August installed
on the door to the loft apartment is now useless, as Regina can unlock it with
magic. Granted they didn’t have to worry
about magic when they installed the deadbolt, but now that magic is in
Storybrooke, it defeats the purpose of it being here, particularly when you
remember that they originally installed the deadbolt for the main purpose of
making sure Regina couldn’t enter the loft apartment with her skeleton key. Second of all, Neal, you’re such a dopey
dad. You actually needed Emma to point
out how dense you were about Henry sneaking off. Next, how could Regina use Graham’s heart
like a walkie-talkie during the flashback?
I thought magic didn’t exist in Storybrooke at this point! Magic rules are so arbitrary. Finally, we have Henry’s attempt at getting
rid of magic by blowing up the wishing well?
While I get where the kid was coming from and respect his reasons for
attempting to do so (and it is a little nod to the fact that he’s the son of
Neal/Baelfire, who is the original hater of all things magic), I REALLY don’t
think it works that way. It’s not like
it’s a constant stream of magic that’s coming into Storybrooke. Magic came in. It’s already here. If you brick up a doorway, it won’t
automatically get rid of something that’s already came through it. Besides, while I get why you’re blaming magic
for everything that’s going down, it is a bit like blaming the actual gun for gun
violence. It’s targeting the symptom
instead of the underlying cause of the problem.
But again, I know have to keep in mind that he’s still just a kid, so
he’s going to react like a kid. On a
final note, the whole ‘he’s my son, not
yours’ angle between Regina and Emma is getting REALLY old. How much longer can they drag that out before
they finally realize that they can BOTH be his mother and put an end to this
pointless battle over Henry? The kid’s
not a rope, ladies. Stop playing tug-of-war. All things considered, I really think that,
with the exception of Mr. Gold, practically everyone was taking stupid pills
offscreen during this episode. Thankfully, things improve a bit in the next episode.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

CRIMINY! Calm down, OUAT! Why are you throwing this moral and ethical
debate in our faces?

My personal
opinion about what Mary Margret/Snow did in this episode is that she wasn’t
wrong. Yes, it was messed up that she
deceived Regina into placing Cora’s cursed heart back into her mother’s
chest. I won’t deny that. But I personally feel she was in the right in
killing Cora. That woman had already
killed two people- Johanna and some other random person who she disguised to
look like Archie’s dead body in her plot to frame Regina. Maybe even three, if that nameless guy she
turned into a fish counts as murder, because for all we know, someone might
have unknowingly caught that fish and sent him off to that fish & chips
restaurant we keep seeing in the background. Not to mention what she did to the entire
village of Enchanted Forest refugees, as well as Snow's mother. It’s
a safe bet that Cora wouldn’t hesitate to continue picking people off. Simply put, Cora posed a real danger to Mary
Margret/Snow’s entire family, and everyone else in Storybrooke, for that matter. And the fact that she desired to become the
Dark One herself only launched the level of bad into the stratosphere. There’s a significant difference between
coldblooded murder and justifiable homicide.
And while Cora did seem to show brief signs of redeeming herself in
those last few seconds before the curse placed on her heart kicked in, we did
see she chose power over love before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she made
the same choice again later on down the line.
Besides, I really don’t buy the fact that she ever really loved her daughter, even after she got her heart back. In future episodes, we’ll see two different
characters who have had their hearts removed for an extended period of time-
one who elected to have it done and another whose heart was taken by
force. Regardless of the method
involved, those two people still were able to express their love to the people
they cared for the most. In fact, there
didn’t seem to be any significant difference in how they acted or treated their
loved ones when their hearts were absent.
As a result, I got the impression that a person doesn’t need their heart
to love. Their feelings may be dulled
and muted, but they’re still present.
You never see that with Cora, who only seemed to be able to sincerely
love Regina once she got her heart back.
That makes me think that, even if she’d had her heart the whole time,
Regina still wouldn’t have been her first priority. I honestly don’t know what it would have
taken to get Regina to realize that her mother was never on her side to begin
with. While you did see some hints of
her doubt, it never seemed to sink in.
Come on, lady. Cora chose to take
the dagger over trying to save you during the confrontation in Gold’s
shop. What more proof did you need?

As much as I
talk about how conniving and manipulative Mr. Gold can be, it was touching to
see him giving that goodbye speech to the amnesiac Belle. And, I suppose it was nice to see him making
amends with his son. However, am I alone
in thinking the whole sordid history between Cora and Rumpelstiltskin was a bit
disturbing? Because I’m pretty sure I
threw up in my mouth a little when watching that. Still, seeing how that turned out does give
the early stages of Rumpelstiltskin/Belle a new light. It does explain why he
genuinely believed no one could actually love him, which was what led him to pushing
Belle away when she tried to tell him otherwise. Guy has been burned before. And more than once.

Snow’s mother. Wow, was that a complete and total 180 from
what we saw of her in the last episode.
Did she just have a James Potter complex? You know, starting out as a bigheaded little
snot but then getting hit with the humility stick as she got older? Also, is it bad that it took me a while to
figure out the young prince who felt sympathy for Cora in the beginning of the flashback subplot and Regina’s father were the same person?
That man didn’t age well, did he?
Though, considering how Cora turned out, it wouldn’t surprise me if he
went prematurely grey.

I was
pleasantly surprised by how OUAT’s version of the Miller’s Daughter story was
so on par with the original story. After
all, they have given new twists on other fairy tales. But isn’t it a bit far-fetched that Cora claimed
to spin straw into gold, something that Rumpelstiltskin could do without
breaking a sweat? I can’t help but think
that he somehow put the idea in her head to make sure she’d marry Henry Senior
and eventually give birth to Regina. And
we all remember what he needed her for. Rumple,
you really are a twisted puppet master, aren’t you?

Monday, July 27, 2015

I’m sorry, I
can’t let this slide. How did Hook find
Rumple and company in New York? Yeah, I
know he had a map and sailed there on the Jolly Roger. I got that.
But how did he track them down to Neal’s apartment complex? I somehow doubt his map pinpointed the exact location where he would find
Rumpelstiltskin, and given what we saw in the last episode, I highly doubt he
got any help from Cora and Regina. It
all comes down to the fact that New York’s a big city full of modern world
charm and Hook is a man with an Old World mindset. Unlike the people of Storybrooke, he doesn’t
have cursed memories to help him acclimate himself to the modern world. Future episodes even highlight the fact that
modern things like computers and whatnot are completely foreign and alien to
him. Imagine someone like that trying to
locate one person in Manhattan. Even
someone who has grown up in the Land
Without Magic can have a hard time navigating the streets of New York,
especially if they’ve never been there before.
But in spite of all that, he
seems to find them without any effort. The
way he just charged right in indicated he knew for a fact that they would be there.
Was he just wandering through the city aimlessly and just happened to be on the street corner at
the exact moment they came back to
get Henry’s camera? If that’s how it
happened, that was incredibly good
luck. Now that I think about it, this
isn’t the first time something like this happened. Back in ‘Skin
Deep,’ Emma somehow was able to
arrive at the cabin just in time to stop Gold/Rumpelstiltskin from beating Belle’s
father to death, but we never see how she figured out where they were. I have heard that there was going to be a
scene that explained this moment, but they had to cut out a few scenes from
that episode for time constraints. But
in the case of Hook in New York, I don’t even know if a scene explaining his
sudden appearance existed. Even so, this
does seem to be another underrated moment that indicates how similar Hook and
Emma are. They’ve now both had moments
when they suddenly are able to figure out the exact location of
Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, with no scene indicating precisely how they figured it
out. In both situations, we’re pretty
much expected to just go with it.

Speaking of
Hook, as it was pointed out to me in a Tumblr post, when he goes to retrieve
his trademark hook from the sheriff station, we see Emma has also kept the
scarf he’d used to bandage her hand back in ‘Tallahassee.’ Hmm. I wonder what THAT was about.

So, the main
point of this episode is showing how Snow lost her mother as a child. It was all part of an elaborate plan of
Cora’s to get Regina on the throne. A
plot that involved poisoning Snow’s mother and then ensuring Regina was in the
position to save Snow’s life when her horse bolted. Oh, and this plan also involved Cora impersonating
the Blue Fairy to try and convince Snow to utilize Black Magic in order to save
her mother’s life by taking someone else’s.
Given all that, I cannot fault Mary Margret/Snow in the slightest for
wanting to kill Cora in the end, particularly after she murdered Johanna, her childhood nanny and only remaining connection to her lat mother. Not
only had Cora done a bang up job of making Snow’s childhood utter crap, the
woman is beyond crazy! She NEEDS to be
taken down.

Regina
really is losing my support now. When
she was trying to change her ways, I was willing to give her the benefit of a
doubt. When people still cast her aside
even after she did the right thing in ‘Queen
of Hearts,’ I felt bad for her. But
now, even after finding out all the underhanded methods Cora used to get her
way, it still isn’t sinking into her skull that Cora’s promises of getting her
back with Henry is nothing more than the old carrot on a stick ploy. As for her whole ‘what did trying hard get me’ speech? Lady, have you forgotten the ONLY reason your
attempts at trying hard failed was
because Cora made everyone believe you’d killed Archie? The key word in all this is Cora! CORA is the reason why people stopped
trusting you again. What’s it going to
take for you to figure it out?! Also,
they DID have dinner with you. They
might have been leery of you, but can you really blame them after all the stuff
you did? At the end of the day, you do have quite a lot to make up for. Expecting people to completely believe in your good
intentions after one good deed is a bit unreasonable. You have to continue making them believe
you’re good. You can’t just give up if
the results aren’t immediate.

Oh, and
there’s also the detail of Neal having a fiancée in New York. This episode treats it like a throwaway line,
but it will become quite the point of discussion in later episodes. Plus, we get vague foreshadowing to an
upcoming story arc (Neal knowing how to sail the Jolly Roger, the poison Hook
used on Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, and Neal briefly hinting at why he’s not in the
triple digits age-wise.)

Sunday, July 26, 2015

After
watching this episode, you might be tempted to make an ‘it’s a small world’
joke, but I urge you to refrain. Turns
out, Rumpelstiltskin’s son, Baelfire, is Neal, Emma’s baby daddy. And Emma is reasonably ticked off when she sees him again.
And even more so when he explains his reasons for betraying her- it was
all because August/Pinocchio got him to realize who Emma was and he knew
staying with her could end up with him meeting Rumpelstiltskin again. We’re also finally shown what August showed
him to make him hear him out. But… how
did August KNOW Neal was Baelfire? If
they ever actually explain that later on, I can’t really remember at the moment. I also wonder what prompted Neal/Baelfire to
try and run when Emma rang his doorbell.
I mean, I suppose he might be suspicious of a package being delivered if
he wasn’t expecting one. Was he still
involved in shady business practices?
Unless he recognized Emma’s voice?
That seems a bit of a stretch to me.
How long does vocal recognition memory last? Does anyone know?

At first,
Emma does agree to pretend she never saw Neal because she didn’t want to deal
with him again, but that plan crashed and burned when Neal comes back to make
sure his father doesn’t hurt Emma for not keeping their deal. What follows is a whole family drama scene of
Neal/Baelfire making sure Gold/Rumpelstiltskin know he doesn’t want anything to
do with him and Henry getting upset at Emma for not being honest about who his
real father was.

When it
comes to Neal’s reasons for not wanting his father back in his life, I was
right on board with him. He made an
excellent point about how Gold still was trying to cling to his magic when it
was that love of magic that led to their separation in the first place. While Gold was claiming he’d changed, his
actions were clearly saying the exact opposite.
But before you ask, I’m not going to discuss the issue of what Neal did
to Emma right now. Trust me, I’m holding
off on that issue until a later episode analysis.

As for
Henry, I was a bit bugged by his response to learning that Neal was his
biological father. Particularly the bit
when he accuses Emma of being no better than Regina. Yes, they both lied to him about
something. I won’t deny that. But when Regina lied to Henry, it was either
because she wanted to make sure her curse wouldn’t be broken or (in the case of
when she tried to close the wishing well portal instead of helping Emma and
Mary Margret/Snow get home) because she knew she was going back on her promise
to redeem herself and she was trying to cover up her betrayal of Henry’s trust. Either way, both times, she was lying to make
sure she got her own way, and to cover up her own misdeeds. Emma, on the
other hand, lied about the identity of Henry’s birth father because she was a)
trying to protect him and b) still hurt by what Neal did to her and didn’t want
to relive it. After all, Neal’s betrayal
was what ultimately led Emma to give up Henry in the first place, and it’s why
she has such a hard time letting people in.
For her, the truth was still a sensitive, painful topic. Who’d want to relive something like
that? At the same time, I know deep down
that I have to cut the kid a bit of slack.
After all, while Henry is a sharp, clever boy, he’s still only 11 years
old. You can’t expect a kid that age to
see things from an adult perspective.

And then
there’s Regina, who you just want to Gibbs-Slap. She is practically seeing the proof that Cora
is really just interested in helping herself, and is only out to obtain the
Dark One’s dagger. She has no true intention
of helping her daughter out. But of
course, Regina’s got her blinders on and falls for Cora’s flowery speech. I get it.
Cora is her mother, and like most people, Regina has unconditional love
for her parents. But even so, this is
the woman who cast the curse and kept it going for 28 years. This is the woman
who nearly got away with framing Mary Margret/Snow for murder. Regina, aren’t you supposed to be smarter
than this?

Oh, there’s
also the Enchanted Forest subplot, which is quite groan-inducing in its own
right. Rumple, haven’t you ever read
Oedipus? Granted that play probably
didn’t exist in the Enchanted Forest, but again, this is the Enchanted Forest. The place where fairy tale characters and old
legendary figures are real people. It’s
perfectly reasonable to conclude that Oedipus might have been an actual person
in this world at some point. While some
might regard the story of Oedipus as a whole subconscious desire to sleep with
your mother thing, there was also the less-spoken-of message. In an effort to prevent a prophesy from being
fulfilled, King Laius had his infant son tossed out into the woods to die. But in doing that, the king triggered a
series of events that just ensured
that the prophesy would play out after all.
In a nutshell, if you try and cheat fate, you’ll only end up making sure
it happens. And that’s a lesson that
Rumple should have learned the hard way in this episode. By purposely injuring himself during the Ogre
Wars so he wouldn’t die in battle and leave his unborn son without a father, he
only triggered the series of events that ultimately led to his separation from
Baelfire. And the reason why I said
‘should have learned’ is because he clearly doesn’t learn his lesson. After becoming the Dark One and losing
Baelfire, Rumpelstiltskin crosses paths with the seer again. When the seer tells him of another prophesy
that involves a young boy being his undoing, Dark One Rumpelstiltskin immediately
vows to kill the boy. Seriously,
guy! Have you learned NOTHING about
tampering with prophesies?

Friday, July 24, 2015

So, Jack the
Giant Killer was a woman? Who knew? It was great to see Anton, the giant Emma
befriended again, but that whole backstory they gave him? Someone give that guy a hug, cause he needs
one! To say it was bad luck that the
humans he ‘befriended’ were Charming’s conniving twin brother and his equally
deceptive girlfriend would be a severe understatement. (Props to David/Charming for how quickly he
realized Anton was mistaking him for his twin). As tragic as it was that he put his trust in
the wrong people, which resulted in the death of his brothers, it’s made even more
tragic by the fact that Anton had the right idea prior to this encounter. First with his questioning of why they still
grew the beans when no one even used them, which was an obvious nod to tradition
vs. change, and then his understanding that the actions of a few bad humans
didn’t necessarily mean that all humans were bad. It’s really a shame his encounter with Prince
James and Jack made him change his mind.
Thankfully, he’s reminded of his earlier belief that not all humans are
bad when David/Charming saves his life, and he receives a warm welcome to
Storybrooke, with everyone offering him a fresh start. He even becomes an honorary dwarf when they
start creating a field to grow a new crop of magic beans from a preserved
cutting Anton got from his dying brother.
I get a kick out the irony of that- the giant Anton, someone who is from
a species known for their large stature, becomes ‘adopted’ by the dwarfs, who
are traditionally depicted as little men.

I really
liked seeing Ruby/Red doing what she could to comfort the amnesiac Belle. Always nice to see the show writers
remembering stuff like the fact that these two women had been developing a
friendship. Of course, that moment is
brushed aside rather quickly to remind us that Greg Mendel is still around, as
well as the little issue of him seeing Gold conjuring a fireball at the town
line.

This episode
also brings up a nature vs. nurture debate, when David/Charming is left
wondering how he could have turned out if it had been him who was raised by
King George and Prince James had stayed with their birth mother, Ruth. Mary Margret/Snow is rather quick to reassure
him it wouldn’t have made a difference because David and Prince James had
different hearts. On the other hand, we
have seen hints of darkness in David sprouting up here and there. First with him willing to simply allow the
wrath to take Regina before Emma talked him out of it in ‘Broken,’ and then how he came close to shooting Albert/King George
in ‘Child of the Moon.’ While you could argue that he was justified
in his anger in those situations, it still showed him teetering on the edge.

Also, Snow,
while it really was great of you to apologize to Regina for doubting her in
this episode, it was rather cold of you to say that Emma didn’t have to tell
her she was leaving Storybrooke with Henry to help Gold find his son. Seriously, you should have just stopped at ‘we didn’t know where you were,’ which
was the honest truth. If you wanted to
add something more to that, just tell her that Emma didn’t feel comfortable
with leaving him behind when Cora was on the loose. I’m sure Regina would have understood of
that. And maybe then, the whole issue of
Regina running back to Mommy Cora (and her trying to use Anton’s justifiable anger
at Prince James to get rid of David/Charming) could have been avoided entirely.

As for the
Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, Emma and Henry subplot? DANG!
Gold, can you spell ‘anger management?’
What was with that little fit you had in the airport bathroom? Were you that
upset over having to put the shawl in through the x-ray scanner? While I understand you were scared of losing
your memories, that obviously didn’t happen.
All you gained from that hissy
fit were bloody knuckles, which you can’t heal because your magic is null and
void outside of Storybrooke. Unless…
that’s what happened when you lost the shawl for that brief moment? You lost your magic? I don’t know.
It’s not really clear if something happened when he took of the shawl,
if anything happened at all. So his
meltdown in the bathroom seems like an extreme overreaction. But to be fair, we have seen him violently overreact
like this a few times before, so I suppose it’s not that out of character for
him.

The best
part of this episode, however, was this bit of dialogue, which occurs when
David/Charming, Mary Margret/Snow and Leroy/Grumpy are running from the enraged
Anton.

Leroy: So
let me get this straight – you got a twin brother?

David: Yeah.

Leroy: His
name is James?

David:
Right.

Leroy: Well,
your name is James.

David: No,
actually, it’s not.

Leroy: It’s
Charming, then?

Mary
Margret: No, that’s the nickname I gave him.

Leroy: Hey,
hold on. What the hell is your name?

David: David.

Leroy: Your
curse name?

David: My
real name!

Leroy: What,
you’re David, James, and Charming? Is David like a middle name?

David: No!
It’s my name-name.

Leroy: You
know what? I’m going to call you whatever I damn well please! Is that okay?!

David: Sure,
Leroy.

Not only is
it great to FINALLY get confirmation on what Charming’s birth mother, Ruth,
named him, but it’s one of the little moments where the show seems aware of its
own ridiculousness. It certainly got a
chuckle out of me, especially since they were having this discussion while
running from a rampaging giant. It’s
like, really? Is this really the appropriate time
for this conversation?

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

While ‘Child
of the Moon’ focused of Ruby/Red, this episode is a character building moment
for Dr. Whale/Frankenstein. It also
shines a new light on his reasons for trying to resurrect Daniel in ‘The
Doctor.’ He was trying to see if his
experiment in bringing people back to life could actually work, in the hopes
that he might have better luck in bringing back his dead brother again. Turns out that was who Frankenstein’s
‘monster’ was- his younger brother, who was fatally shot when Frankenstein
tried to exhume a body for his famous experiment. Unfortunately, even with the heart he
obtained from Rumpelstiltskin during the events of ‘The Doctor,’ Dr.
Frankenstein didn’t successfully bring his brother back. At least, not completely. While the resurrected Gerhardt did show a
semblance of his true self, something vital was lost. As horrible as it might be for me to say
this, I really couldn’t bring myself to be upset over how Papa Frankenstein
died. In a way, he did kinda bring it
upon himself, and not just because he was completely unsupportive of his oldest
son’s work. Maybe it’s just because I’m
familiar with the story, but it was obvious that the resurrected Gerhardt was
simply afraid of the burning candle. Not
once did I get the impression that he understood Victor was only trying to help
restore their family. I did however, feel bad for the two brothers, particularly at then end, when Victor is struggling with the decision of ending his brother's suffering, and, even when Gerhardt regains enough awareness to non verbally give his consent, Victor cannot go through with it.

We also see
Whale/Frankenstein going through an existential crisis. After his failure with resurrecting Daniel,
he’s clearly left feeling inadequate, and doubts his ability as a medical
doctor. We see this when he’s drinking
on the job, and how he’s hesitant to even try to save the outsider Greg
Mendel’s life. His first instinct is to
ask Gold/Rumpelstiltskin to heal him through magic instead, and even when Gold
refuses to help, it still takes him a while to regain his confidence. It takes a pep talk from Ruby to help him get
back on his feet. And it’s in watching
this scene that I finally understand why some fans of the show seem to support
these two as a legit couple. In the end,
he manages to save Greg Mendel, and it looks like everything can go back to
normal, particularly after Emma, fills her role as Sheriff, interrogates Greg
and determines that he didn’t see anything unusual before crashing his
car. But in the final moments, we find
out that Greg did indeed see Gold conjure up a fireball. To be honest, I’m kinda surprised Emma’s
superpower didn’t kick in. While he
probably wasn’t necessarily lying (he may very well have been texting),
wouldn’t Emma have been able to tell that he wasn’t being completely
truthful? Unless it only applies to direct
lies. That's certainly what seems to trigger it other times.

There was a
moment when I was right on board with Regina when she was reunited with
Cora. I was internally cheering for her
when she showed her understanding of why everyone believed she’d killed Archie,
and how she realized how manipulative her mother was. For one brief, shining moment, I saw some
promise in her. It indicated that she
might even be willing to forgive everyone for doubting her, now that she could
prove her innocence. And that fact alone
showed real personal growth. Of course,
when Regina is taking Cora into town in order to expose her mother and clear
her name, she allows Cora to get her claws into her again. I understand this isn’t exactly the easiest
situation for Regina to be in. After
all, Cora is her mother. But at the same
time, she seems to instantly forget that she was starting to get Henry back in
her life, and the only reason she lost him again was because Cora
interfered. Seriously, Regina, I KNOW
you love Henry and want him back, but the fact remains that you’ve done a great
job of hurting Henry’s biological family.
If you really want him back, you have to earn everyone’s trust. It might take some time, but, as Isabelle Rae
once said, ‘If something’s worth having,
it’s worth working for.’ Instant
gratification is rarely a good thing in the long run.

It’s rather
clear that Hook isn’t holding a grudge against Emma for the whole beanstalk
debacle. This is evident by his reaction
to seeing how Emma has handcuffed him to the hospital bed. Instead of getting angry, he decides to joke
around with her, even spouting off obvious innuendos. What’s more is his response when Emma comes
across him after the car accident at the end of the last episode. Let’s recap here for a moment: this is the
first time they’re seeing each other since Emma clocked him in the jaw at Lake
Nostros and left him stranded in the Enchanted Forest. AND the man was just hit by a car. Yet, the very first words out of his mouth
were ‘hey, beautiful.’ I’m sorry, what was that you said before,
Hook? Something about being done with
Emma? I don’t think you even tried. We also get that little moment when Hook
first comes acquainted with jell-o. A
scene that wound up being placed among the show’s deleted scenes. I’m really not sure why they didn’t’ leave
that moment in the final cut, as it’s a really funny scene. You gotta get a kick out of the fact that, of
all the reasons Hook could have broken out of his handcuffs for, it was to come
and ask Emma to identify the jiggly blue squares he found on the tray. Was it because Hook seemed to be coming on to
Ruby/Red at the end of the scene? If
that’s the case, that’s kinda dumb, since the next episode shows him making a
few lewd comments to Mary Margret/Snow, and they had no problem leaving those
in.

I really did
feel bad for Gold/Rumpelstiltskin in this episode, particularly after the
amnesiac Belle smashed her chipped cup against the wall. Of course, he loses some of that sympathy
when he directly threatens the Charming family at the end of the episode. I get that he’s protective over Belle, but if
he’s really that worried about Hook going after her again when he’s off looking
for his lost son, Baelfire, wouldn’t it simply be easier to place a protection
spell over her? That’s a thing, right? That aside, we also see him deciding to cash
in the favor Emma promised him way back in ‘The Price of Gold,’ and she now has to accompany him on his trip.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

This episode
was really Belle’s time to shine. In the
Enchanted Forest flashback, we see her volunteering to help stop a creature
called a Yaguai, with some encouragement from Grumpy, back when he was still
Dreamy and preparing to run away with Nova.
It was a nice little nod to the events in the ‘Dreamy’ flashback where we saw Belle encouraging him to follow his
heart. It was great to see him returning
the favor by coming back and encouraging Belle.
It’s just a shame that we know Dreamy/Grumpy is about to get his dreams
crushed after the two part again (stupid meddlesome Blue Fairy). As for Belle, because this takes place in an
old-world style dimension where people have this whole ‘what does a woman know’ and
‘books are for nerds’ mindset, the
men who are hunting the Yaguai ditch Belle rather quickly. Although, I did get a huge grin at the fact
that Belle anticipated this and deliberately sent them on off in the wrong
direction. Belle’s quest to find the
Yaguai ends up with her path crossing with Mulan, who clearly woke up on the
wrong side of the bed that morning.
While I understand that she’s frustrated on missing her shot, she was
unnecessarily dismissive of Belle. I mean,
Belle had just told Mulan that her book helped her find the Yaguai in less than
a day, but Mulan brushes off her offer to help locate the beast again by
stating she’d only be in the way. Mulan,
what part of ‘I found the beast without
any effort’ did you not understand?
To her credit, she figures this out rather quickly and comes back to
accept Belle’s help. In the end, it is
Belle’s gift of knowledge that helps her defeat the Yaguai, who it turns out
was Prince Phillip under a curse the whole time. So, now we know how Phillip and Mulan met in
the first place. And we finally find out
how Belle was captured by Evil Queen Regina.

In the
present time, Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin plans to use a potion on Baelfire’s old
shawl to protect his memories when crossing the town line in order to finally
locate his long-lost son. But when Hook
manages to steel the shawl from Gold’s shop, Belle’s knowledge of books comes
in handy once again, and she manages to locate the cloaked Jolly Roger where
it’s docked at Storybrooke’s pier. This
results in her not only finding out Archie is still alive but also to her
confrontation with Hook. This
confrontation is definitely a must-watch.
It’s also one of the few moments I have to raise an eyebrow at Belle’s
reaction to things. On the one hand, I
understand how she feels loyalty to Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin due to the whole
True Love thing. But when she witnesses
the confrontation between Hook and Gold on the deck of the Jolly Roger, she
practically gets the confirmation that what Hook told her about Milah’s death
was true. And yet, we never see her
confronting Gold about that later. So,
no concern about the detail about how he killed his first wife, then? That didn’t raise any alarm bells for
you? Okay, more power to you, girl. In the end, Gold gets the shawl back and is
all set to cross the town line. But
Hook, deciding to use a different tactic at avenging Milah, interferes and
forces Belle across the town line. As
such, she loses her memories. Before the
two old enemies can have what would be their final face-off, a car appears out
of nowhere, hitting Hook pretty hard before crashing into the ditch. The episode closes with the camera focusing
on the car’s license plates, revealing the driver is not a local. As the old saying goes, there goes the
neighborhood.

I’m rather
impressed that Baelfire’s shawl survived all these years. I don’t claim to be an expert on the
preservation of historic articles of clothing, but I imagine after 300 years,
fabric would start to disintegrate or something. I don’t think it would be so intact. Unless Dark One Rumpelstiltskin put some sort
of spell on it in order to preserve it, which wouldn’t surprise me in the
slightest. Speaking of the shawl, how
did Hook know about it? Yeah, I get that
his old buddy, Smee, most likely filled him in on how Mr. Gold/Rumplestilskin
performed that experiment at the town line in order to test his
memory-protecting potion, but Gold only told Belle about the shawl. Unless
Hook was spying on them when they were discussing the shawl?

It’s in this
episode where we start to see what’s hidden under the surface of Hook’s harsh
attitude. First, when we see how quiet
he gets when commenting on how Milah was the one who made Baelfire’s
shawl. After all this time, he clearly
still loves the woman. But what really
makes it so heartbreaking is the moment when he starts taunting
Gold/Rumpelstiltskin, challenging him to finish the job and kill him. While this could be partially to force Belle
to see the sinister side of Gold, it also shows that Hook has no attachment to
his life. He WANTS to die, just so he
can be reunited with the woman he loved.
We did see a hint of it back in ‘Queen
of Hearts,’ when he challenged Cora to try and kill him, but here, it’s
really evident. That knowledge alone is
enough to make you want to hug the poor guy.

It’s also
rather interesting that Hook could tell Archie wasn’t lying when he stated he
knew nothing about the Dark One’s dagger.
We’ve established that Emma’s ‘superpower’ grants her the ability to
tell when someone is lying to her. Does
Hook have his own internal lie-detector as well? It’s never something that’s confirmed in the
show, but it is fun to speculate. Also,
Hook threatening Archie’s life in this episode does seem to mirror how Emma
threatened to feed him to the ogres back in the Enchanted Forest. Especially how in both situations, the one
doing the threatening was trying to get someone to talk. As I’ve said before, these two do seem to be
cut from the same cloth.

This is also
where we start getting an ongoing subplot that continues on for a few more
episodes. Now that everyone in town
knows the Enchanted Forest still exists, many of the townspeople voice an interest
in going back, including David/Charming, who has doubts that he wants to stay
in Storybrooke for the rest of his life.
This leads to a brief conflict with Mary Margret/Snow, when she starts
considering looking for a bigger house in Storybrooke. There’s also the moment when Leroy/Grumpy
brings up an interesting point- now that the curse is broken, it’s entirely
possible that outsiders will stumble across the town. If that happens, they could have a whole E.T./King
Kong problem on their hands. This prediction comes true in the episode’s
last few seconds. My question is what
exactly was keeping people from not finding it earlier. I know the curse was probably the reason, but
how exactly was it doing that? What
would happen if someone was simply driving down the road that led to Storybrooke? Would they instantly teleport to the other
side of town? Is there a protective
spell over the town like there is in the Harry Potter universe? Like, if anyone gets too close to the town
line, they’ll suddenly remember a pressing appointment and turn around? I don’t think it’s simply a case of
Storybrooke not appearing on any map, because just being an uncharted town
doesn’t always keep people out. (If you
haven’t seen the musical Brigadoon yet, I highly urge you to do so. It can be a bit cheesy, but it’s still a
sweet story).

On a final
note, Henry seems to be a bit inconsistent in this episode. At the end, when they find out Archie’s
alive, he claimed he knew Regina hadn’t been responsible for his supposed
death. But mere seconds earlier, he was
talking about how Regina had hurt Archie, and how they might need weapons to
protect them from her. Not once in this
episode did we ever see Henry doubting that Regina had killed Archie, but the
moment they find out she really didn’t, he’s suddenly saying that he knew it
all along. You’d think the people who
proof-read the script would have caught this.

Monday, July 20, 2015

One phrase
to describe this episode is ‘emotional rollercoaster.’ Last episode ended with us wanting to yell at
our heroes for leaving Regina out of their celebratory dinner at Granny’s. However, in this episode, we see Emma kinda
make up for that by inviting her to the ‘Welcome Home’ party. But things start to get off track when Emma
lets slip that Archie/Jiminy told her about how Regina was meeting with him to
discuss her rehabilitation. While I can
understand why Regina might have felt betrayed by this, Archie was simply
trying to vouch for her, to help convince the others that she was trying to
change. Isn’t that what Regina
wanted? For people to believe that she
was trying and give her a chance?
Anyway, Cora, who is now lurking around Stroybrooke in secret after she and Hook make it into this world via magic bean portal, takes
advantage of Regina’s anger at Archie and successfully frames Regina for
Archie’s murder. I did appreciate how
Emma seemed hesitant to automatically blame Regina, even pointing out the time
when evidence suggested Mary Margret/Snow had murdered Kathryn/Abigail. And while David/Charming and Mary Margret/Snow
had a good reason for being hesitant to trust Regina, as they tried to give her
a second chance in the past only to have Evil Queen Regina toss their pity back
in their faces, Emma does have a point- this time, Regina was actually making
an effort. But in the end, Emma is also
led to believe in Regina’s guilt, and she bans Regina from being with
Henry.

The episode
ends with us feeling torn. You can’t
really fault the good guys for turning on Regina, because they’ve seen the
proof in Pongo’s memories, which Emma manages to collect and read with a magic
dreamcatcher from Gold’s shop, and at present, there’s no way they could know
that Cora made it to Storybrooke after all.
And it’s not as if Pongo can tell them that it wasn’t actually Regina he
saw entering Archie’s office. Because it
was clear from his reaction that he could sense that wasn’t the real
Regina. At the same time, we, the
viewers, all see that Regina had been framed by Cora in order to isolate her
daughter. That leaves us with the
knowledge that our heroes are undoubtedly going to feel horribly guilty when
the truth comes out. But the question
is, will Regina accept their apologies for doubting her? After all, as I just said, they really can’t
be faulted for falling for Cora’s frame job, but Regina isn’t exactly the most forgiving
person. (How long did she hold a grudge
against a ten-year-old?) Plus, as the
episode ends, we see that Archie is actually alive, but being held prisoner on
Hook’s ship.

And yes, this is the episode when the phase 'taco time' originated. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's a reference to that scene in the beginning when Emma and Henry come back from the town market to find David/Charming and Mary Margret/Snow still in bed, and it's glaringly obvious what they were up to. The whole entire scene is simply hilarious, from Snow and Charming's pathetic attempts to explain the situation to the completely oblivious Henry to Emma's priceless expression. Speaking of Henry, should he really have been that in the dark about what his grandparents were up to? Granted I don't know many 10/11 year olds, so I'm not the best judge, but the kid's in his pre-teen years at this point, or at least is about to be. Isn't that about the time where they get 'the talk?' Then again, I suppose no one's really had the opportunity to do so, given how there's rarely a dull moment in Storybrooke, especially since the curse broke, and for some reason, I have my doubts that Regina would have taken the time to sit him down to explain things. Anyway, to get back on track, the visibly flustered Emma tries to defuse the situation by ushering Henry off to help her 'make some tacos.' And thus, a fanmade-phrase was born.

Okay, now
let’s talk about the subtle bit of foreshadowing in this episode. When Hook and Cora first arrive in
Storybrooke, there are some shots that show swans swimming around. Let’s think about this here. This scene is happening at night, and the
Storybrooke docks are surrounded by saltwater.
The thing is, swans are diurnal birds that prefer freshwater, so the
fact that these swans are there right now is highly unusual. And if these swans were just a bunch of wild
birds that came along while they were filming this episode, the film crew would
either have chased them off or edited them out in post. The only conclusion is that they wanted to put these swans in this scene
on purpose. The fact that they
deliberately place actual swans in a scene where Hook first sets foot in
Stroybrooke? I admit, that makes me
smile like a loon.

One last
question. What is THAT in the
background?! That thing just above Mary Margret/Snow's head? That is a headless
mannequin! WHY? What is that supposed to advertise,
Storybrooke shop keepers? More importantly, why am I so focused on such a pointless and random detail?

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Well, wasn’t
this an interesting episode? We find out
how Hook’s quest to kill Rumpelstiltskin got him involved with Cora in the
first place. It turns out that when
Regina pushed Cora through the mirror portal, she wound up in Wonderland. (Oh, I get it. Through the Looking Glass. That’s clever!) But Regina knows that her curse will
undoubtedly suck up Cora anyway, so she enlists Hook to travel into Wonderland
himself in order to kill Cora once and for all.
Which brings me to my main grievance with Evil Queen Regina in this
episode. You claim you know all about
who Hook is, and yet you give him the one-time opportunity to remove someone’s
heart? You even have the gall to remind
him he’s seen it done before?! Lady,
what is your problem? You of all people
should appreciate how that’s undoubtedly a touchy subject with him. ANYWAY, upon entering Wonderland, we see Cora
has done a great job of intergrading herself in that world, even becoming the
iconic Queen of Hearts (how fitting).
But because Cora had hidden away her own heart in an undisclosed
location (you can do that?), Hook is unable to remove it from her. Cora convinces Hook to join forces with her
instead, and she creates a magical barrier that shields a portion of the
Enchanted Forest from Regina’s curse.
Which explains how Phillip, Aurora, Mulan, and the people who once lived
at the refugee camp remained behind.

That was a
really clever move Mary Margret/Snow used to get out of Rumpelstiltskin’s
cage. But it did remind me of something.

Yeah,
Rumpelstiltskin could have used the squid ink to get out of that cell whenever
he wanted. I suppose it’s not too
surprising, considering who we’re talking about here. And I understand he wanted to be taken up in
the curse, which would explain why he stuck around. But that means he left that scroll behind,
knowing that Emma would one day be in that predicament and would need the squid
ink to escape. Well, if he’s that
omnipotent, he must know that they would succeed in getting out and eventually
stop Cora from taking the portal to Storybrooke. Which just begs the question of why he’s
trying to close the wishing well portal.
What does he have to gain from keeping Emma and her mother from
returning? Especially since he ends up
needing Emma’s help in a few more episodes.

So, let’s
talk about the best scene in this episode- the fight at Lake Nostros. First of all, so much for your vow that you
were done with Emma, Hook. Let’s think
about this for a minute. On the one
hand, we have Emma. Someone who, prior
to this moment, has only used a sword once when she was fighting Cora’s army of
heartless zombies (I’m not counting the fight with Dragon Maleficent, since
Emma pretty much rejected using the sword until she threw it at the dragon),
and it’s certainly her first time in an actual duel. On the other hand, we have Hook- a
professional pirate with 300+ years of experience under his belt. I think it’s safe to say he’s not just a
sword master, but a grandmaster. I’m fairly certain, unless a future flashback
proves otherwise, the only time he hasn’t won a duel was when he went up
against Dark One Rumpelstiltskin, and that probably shouldn’t even count
because Rumple kept cheating by teleporting himself out of the way. Criminy, this is the same man who we’ll see
in a future episode taking on a dozen of Evil Queen Regina’s soldiers by
himself and coming away without a scratch.
So yeah, Hook was either letting
Emma win or at least going super-easy on her.
While I’m no expert, there were plenty
of opportunities where he could have killed her had he wanted to. Instead, he chose to not only take a quick
time-out to prevent Aurora’s heart from falling into the whirlpool (while using
Emma’s leg as an anchor to keep himself from falling into the whirlpool as well;
even when those two are on opposing sides, they still manage to make a great
team), but also be all smug and throw out a blatant double entendre at Emma. Even
the part when Emma appears to knock him out.
We find out in a later episode that he witnessed the moment when Cora
tried to remove Emma’s heart. How could
he have seen that when he was supposed to be lying unconscious? Try and explain that one, you big faker!

Speaking of
the scene when it’s revealed Emma’s heart cannot be taken, that was the moment
when they decided that they were done being subtle with Emma having powerful
magical abilities and just hit us over the head. Remember the electrical wires that sparked
when Emma first arrived in Storybrooke?
Or how Jefferson’s magic hat didn’t activate until Emma touched Regina’s
shoulder in ‘Broken?’ The fact that those little hints kept popping
up keeps me from labeling it as a Deus ex Machina moment. It was also nice to see that little conversation
between Emma and Gold/Rumpelstiltskin at the end, when Emma was thinking that
she was nothing more than a pawn in all of this, prompting Gold to inform her
that he simply took who she was into consideration when he was planning
everything out. That scene just
reminded me of a quote I came across once.
Something about how we’re only destined to do the things we would have
done anyway. I’m not quite sure who said
that originally, but I rather like that quote.
And it’s so fitting for this scene.

This episode
was a really good character development moment for Regina. Throughout this season, she has been trying
to prove to Henry that she can be a better person, and a much better mother to
him. Here, she faces her first real
hurtle in her transformation. With
David/Charming still under the sleeping curse, they have no way of knowing if
Mary Margret/Snow got their message about the squid ink in Rumpelstiltskin’s
old cell. As a result, Regina is left
unsure if Emma and Mary Margret/Snow can defeat Cora and make it back to
Storybrooke. She knows it’s entirely
possible that they could fail and Cora could come through the portal into town,
which is something she doesn’t want to happen, and for good reason. This leads to the episode’s moral dilemma- She
could either do nothing in the hopes that Emma and Mary Margret/Snow will
succeed in defeating Cora or she could take no chances and simply force the
portal back to Storybrooke to close permanently. The second option would undoubtedly kill
whoever was traveling through it at the time, meaning it is entirely possible
that Regina would kill Emma and Snow by closing the portal. It doesn’t help matters when Mr.
Gold/Rumpelstiltskin starts going all Grima Wormtounge on her by pointing out
that if Emma doesn’t make it back, then she will go back to being Henry’s sole
mother. Because of his manipulation,
they very nearly force the wishing well portal to close. (Was Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin using the same
wand he’d taken from the Fairy Godmother in ‘The Price of Gold’ in this scene?)
Thankfully, Henry manages to convince Regina to do the right thing in
the end, and it all pays off. But
seriously, there was no reason why they couldn’t have invited her to go with
them to Granny’s. I think I’ve made it clear
how I felt about this character throughout season one, and how I nearly raged
at the screen whenever she popped up to muck things up again whenever the
protagonists were enjoying a small victory.
But here? That was kind of
insensitive of everyone to just go skipping off together while leaving Regina
in the lurch. For the first time since
the show began, you actually feel bad for her.
And that’s something.

Friday, July 17, 2015

What? No flashback in this episode? Well, that’s unusual. But then again, it’s not the first time this
happened. ‘Broken’ was the first episode that broke that mold. Sadly, there wasn't too much to talk about in this episode, but I'll do my best.

Our heroes
surmise that they can use the fact that both Henry and Aurora can enter into
the Post-Sleeping Curse netherworld in order to swap messages with
Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold, in the hopes that he knows of some way to get them
back to Storybrooke. Because while they
have the compass, they have no plan on how to get the wardrobe ashes from Cora. Gold suggests that they try using the squid
ink that was used with the magic quill that got him imprisoned way back in ‘The Price of Gold,’ which should
paralyze Cora. But before Henry can
instruct Aurora to visit Rumpelstiltskin’s old jail cell in order to find the
squid ink, the Enchanted Forest posse are attacked by Cora’s army of heartless
zombies. In the chaos of the zombie
attack, Aurora is captured and taken to Cora. Not only
that, but the discovery that Henry got a severe burn from his last visit to the
netherworld leads to David/Charming and Regina deciding that it’s too risky to
send Henry back. What follows is a
rather touching moment when David/Charming volunteers to be put under a
sleeping curse so he can communicate with Mary Margret/Snow. It’s just really a perfect demonstration of
how connected these two are, because David/Charming simply KNOWS that Mary
Margret/Snow will plan to enter into the netherworld in Aurora’s place. You can’t help but adore these subtle ways
they illustrate how these two are the very essence of True Love, and how they
know each other so completely, they can simply anticipate what the other is
planning to do, even when they’re in separate worlds. And their interaction in the netherworld was
just perfect. Not to mention the timing
of their reactions was just spot-on, particularly in regards to Mary
Margret/Snow. She was all ‘You’re here!
Oh, I’m so happy to see you.
Waitaminute… how are you
here? Oh, no! Tell me you didn’t!’ That right there is one of the moments when
you just feel that these aren’t just fairy tale characters but a real married
couple, and I adore it. Although, was
anyone else reminded of Phantom of the Opera when David/Charming was in the
Hall of Mirrors? Because I was, and I
don’t pretend to know why.

We also get a
wedge forming between Mulan & Emma and Mary Margret/Snow, particularly after Aurora
gets captured by Cora. Mulan’s loyalty
has always been first and foremost with Aurora and Phillip’s final instructions
to protect her. So when it comes down to
saving Aurora or making sure Emma and Snow get home, she’s of course going to
choose Aurora. But my real question is,
how’d she manage to get the compass off of Emma without her noticing? I realize Emma was kinda focused on her
mother and how she was trying to reenter the sleeping curse netherworld at the time, but even so. I just
always got the impression Emma was sharper than that. There was also that nice little scene with
the captured Aurora and Cora, when the latter tried to sever Aurora’s loyalty
to Emma and Mary Margret/Snow with the promise of information on how to get
Phillip back. Aurora might not be
fighter strong like Emma, Mary Margret/Snow and Mulan, but that scene did show
she had her own brand of strength.

There’s also
the issue of Hook realigning himself with Cora in this episode, which involves
him taking Aurora’s heart (not sure how he accomplished that without waking her
up in the process, but oh well) and giving it to Cora so she can use the princess as a mole. To be
honest, seeing this is not too surprising, as he said a few episodes back that
his loyalty was with whoever got him to Storybrooke. At this point, his only goal is to get
Rumpelstiltskin, and it’s quite possibly the only thing that’s kept him going
for the past few centuries. I tend to
think his preference would have certainly been to go to Storybrooke with Emma
and company, but his effort to prove his trustworthiness to them didn’t exactly work. What more could he have done to prove his loyalty to Emma and the others? He'd already given it his best shot and all it got him was getting shackled up in Anton's treasure hold for 10 hours. So, he didn’t really have
any other option open to him at this point.

Great
Sleeping Beauty reference with the spinning wheel they used to place
David/Charming under the sleeping curse.
I mean, we already knew Aurora, Phillip and Maleficent are real, so
obviously the spinning wheel was a thing, too.
Still was awesome to see.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Well, we’ve
got our first ‘filler’ episode of season 2.
But it was nice to see what happened after the events of the ‘Red Handed’ flashback. A month after Red discovered what she was,
she and Snow are still on the run together.
They encounter a pack of werewolves just like Red, which is led by Red’s
long-lost mother, Anita. From them, Red
learns how to control her transformations, and how to keep her mind while in
wolf form. However, while Red initially
plans to part ways with Snow in order to stay with her new pack, things get a
bit hairy (no pun intended) when Snow unwittingly leads Evil Queen Regina’s
soldiers straight into the werewolf den, resulting in the death of a pack-member, Quinn. Anita plans to have Snow killed as punishment, but Red refuses to allow
this and ultimately kills her mother to protect her friend. This little flashback story ends with Red
indicating she doesn’t regret her choice, as Snow was the first person who
didn’t make her feel like she had to choose between being a wolf or human. This is a really great underlying theme right
here - you don’t have to be blood to be family.

In
Storybrooke, Grumpy/Leroy manages to finally discover the fairy dust diamonds
in the mines beneath the town, which means that they’ve finally got a way to
get Jefferson’s magic hat to work again.
But King George/Albert Spencer, who still isn’t over his grudge against
Charming/David, concocts a rather complicated plan to make the people of
Storybrooke turn against Charming/David.
It involves framing Ruby, who is facing her first full moon
transformation since the curse ended, for the death of Billy/Gus and getting the whole town out for her blood.
But when Charming/David manages to prove that King George/Albert was the
guilty party, King George/Albert retaliates by burning Jefferson’s hat, thus
destroying that method of getting Emma and Mary Margret/Snow back to
Storybrooke.

I have to
ask, was there anyone else who rolled their eyes when that one person in the mob
stated that they weren’t sheep when Charming/David came to Wolf Ruby’s defense? I hate to break it to you, Random Storybrooke
Person, but…. yeah, you ARE sheep. Just
look at how easily swayed you are into joining an angry mob. And by someone who had previously shown himself to be a
nasty piece of work back in Pre-Curse Enchanted Forest. And this isn’t the first time the people of
Storybrooke just turned on someone on a dime.
Remember how quick everyone was to shun Mary Margret in season one
during the whole affair debacle and following possible murder subplot, but then
were instantly chummy again when Mary Margret’s name was cleared? Yeah, ‘not
sheep,’ my eye.

While I was
at first thinking it was rather mean of Ruby/Red to turn down Billy/Gus the
Mouse’s date offer, I instantly forgave her when I realized her reasons for
this was because she was just nervous about the upcoming full moon. It’s such a shame that Billy/Gus was killed
off. It would have been interesting to
see where that would go. Mind you, I’m
someone who often wonders if there might have been something between Ruby and
Graham, had he not been killed off, too.
Yes, we never really saw them interacting during the first half of
season one, but Graham clearly had an affiliation to wolves during his life as
the Huntsman, and Ruby/Red is a
werewolf. I don’t know, I sometimes
think that could have been a good foundation for something, if Graham had
survived to see the curse being broken.
But obviously, we’ll never know for sure.

I really
love seeing the friendship forming between Belle and Ruby/Red, which we saw
beginning in ‘The Crocodile’. Like Snow did in the past, Belle doesn’t
allow the fact that Ruby/Red is a werewolf to bother her in the slightest and refused to let
fear keep her from helping her friend.
Besides, after spending 28 years locked up in the psychiatric ward
beneath the hospital without any human contact, I think Belle more than
deserves the chance to find a group of friends for her to interact with. You know, other than Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin.

We also get
confirmation that Henry and Aurora’s dreams are much more than dreams,
particularly after Henry wakes up with a burn on his hand. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin explains that those who
fall prey to the sleeping curse have their souls slip into some sort of
netherworld, and that sometimes, people who are woken up from this curse can
sometimes astral project themselves back there.
Thanks to a magic pendant Rumpelstiltskin/Gold gives him to control his
trips to the netherworld, we’re shown that Henry can now communicate with
Aurora. Meaning they can now swap
messages between Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest, setting things up for
Ruby/Red’s words of encouragement to David/Charming to be fulfilled- they’ll
find another way to get Emma and Mary Margret/Snow back

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Oh, this
episode. Where do I even begin? With the help of some magic wrist cuffs Hook
obtained from Cora, he and Emma are able to climb up the beanstalk to get the
magic compass. It’s surprisingly easy
for the viewer to warm up to Hook in this episode. For someone who’s supposed to be a
treacherous, fearsome pirate captain, he really comes across as someone you’d
like to bring along on a road trip, just for the sake of keeping you
entertained during the drive. I mean,
really, why does our intrepid team of heroes seem to hate him in this
episode? He’s a hoot! (His response to Mulan’s ‘a hook?’ was just
perfect line delivery.) The dynamic that
he and Emma display is really fun to watch as well. And not just because Hook seems to be able to
figure out what makes her tick without any real effort, even though they’d only
just met a few hours earlier- an ability that Emma seems to mirror as well, as
she manages to figure out Hook’s real motivation in going after Rumpelstiltskin
by just seeing the tattoo on his arm and seeing how he shuts down when she asks
about it. (Close-ups of this tattoo
dedicated to Milah really get you in the feels, as you can see the dagger going
through the heart is actually the Dark One’s dagger.) There were a few moments, during my initial
viewing of this episode, when I had some real ‘wait, did he really just say that?
Lemmie hear that line again!’ moments. Like this exchange, for example:

Emma: Don’t
think I’m taking my eyes off you for a second.

Hook: I
would despair if you did.

There was also Hook’s earlier line of ‘I was hoping it’d be you’ when Emma volunteered
to climb the beanstalk with him. Oh
really, Hook? You were hoping it would
be the woman who saw through your ‘poor little blacksmith’ ruse, held a knife
to your throat, had you tied to a tree and threatened to hand you over to the
ogres? Dude, you’ve got it bad. Don’t even try to deny it. And oh, good gravy, the sexual tension
between these two is just launched into the stratosphere. Just look at the scene when Hook is bandaging
Emma’s hand. First of all, it really
indicates how hyper-aware he already is of her, as he immediately spots her injury
before even Emma can. And don’t get me
started with how he tightens the bandage with his teeth. This moment is made even more awesome when
you realize it wasn’t scripted. I’ve
recently heard that actor Colin O'Donoghue adlibbed that little
moment and actress Jennifer Morrison had no idea he was going to do that
ahead of time. (Although, I have to
wonder why Emma even had to ask what Hook was pouring onto the wound. What else would a pirate captain keep in his
flask?)

Throughout
this whole escapade atop the beanstalk, you can just see how these two are cut
from the same cloth and how well they work together on multiple levels. Unfortunately, Emma figuratively slams on the
brakes as she’s reminded a bit too strongly of a moment in her past which
occurred 11 years ago, when she encountered a man called Neal during her
attempt to steal a yellow bug (the same one she still drives) and realizes
that, thanks to Neal, it was already stolen.
What follows is the pair developing a whole Bonnie and Clyde
relationship until the inevitable betrayal, when Neal sets Emma up and leaves
her to take the fall for a crime he’d committed before they’d met, which
resulted in her being thrown into jail, where she discovers she was pregnant
with Henry. The memory of this betrayal,
which had left permanent emotional and mental scars on her psyche, leads to
Emma turning against Hook and abandoning him at the top of the beanstalk. This scene is just so upsetting, because you
understand why Emma is acting the way she is. At the same time, Hook has been nothing but completely
open from the second he admitted who he really was, and hasn’t given any
indication that he planned to double-cross them in favor of Cora. He even tells Emma to use her superpower on
him to prove his sincerity. In fact, in
the next episode, we learn that he’d taken Cora’s magic bands without her
knowledge. Which means he had been
planning to betray Cora even before he officially met Emma and the others. I tend to think that when he saw what Cora
did to everyone in the Safe Haven village, that was the point when he was all ‘No way.
I don’t want anything to do with this
woman, anymore.’ After all, you can
hear a tone of anger in his voice in the last episode, when he stated that Cora
was the one who killed all those people.
It really makes you wonder how things would have played out if Emma
hadn’t allowed her fears and insecurities take over at that crucial
moment. But, as Aslan said in the Disney/Walden
Media version of Prince Caspian, ‘we can never know what would have happened.’

While I’m on
the subject? Hi, August! I nearly forgot about you! Although, what are you doing following around
Emma in secret? Aren’t you supposed to
be gallivanting around in Thailand at this point? That’s what your spiel back in ‘The Stranger’
suggested. So, what made you come back
just in time to talk Neal into leaving Emma?
And why did you leave again after this incident? We also get confirmation that Neal was the
guy who got the postcard in the first episode of this season, and that it was
August/Pinocchio that sent it. That
aside…. okay, I’m going to hold off my thoughts on the whole Neal issue for the
time being. Because that’s best left
until a future episode analysis.

Snow and
Aurora also have a little bonding moment, springing from the fact that they
were both victims of the Sleeping Curse.
We learn that Snow suffered from bad nightmares for a period of time
after she was woken up, and that Aurora is also having nightmares, too. And, in the final moments, we see Henry is, too. And all three people have the same exact
dream, which suggests that this might be more than just a bad dream. Nice buildup for what’s to come there.

I do find it
pleasantly interesting that the giant they encounter in this episode, whose
name is Anton, wasn’t the vicious monster everyone was expecting. He’s just like a typical person, except for
the obviously significant difference in size.
I found that particularly nice since, during my initial viewing of ‘The Shepherd,’ I was expecting them to
use that kind of twist with the dragon that was supposed to be terrorizing King
George’s kingdom, and that when Charming went out to face the dragon in his
late twin brother’s place, he would find out that the dragon was simply trying
to defend itself, or had a nest of eggs to protect. Something along those lines. Of course, my initial prediction with the
dragon didn’t happen, so I am glad they utilized that plot point in this
episode.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Dr. Whale’s
identity is finally revealed to be Dr. Frankenstein, which I find an
interesting move by the show writers. Up
until now, we’ve only seen characters from fairy tales and well-known bedtime
stories like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. But Dr. Frankenstein? Did anyone ever pick Mary Shelley’s famous novel to put their kid to sleep? Of course, maybe there are parents out there
who get an enjoyment out of potentially giving their little tykes nightmares.

Regina is
trying to prove to Henry that she’s making an effort to redeem herself, and
chooses to show it by giving up magic.
But when she is finding the process to be difficult, she goes to
Archie/Jiminy for guidance. During her
session, she admits she has kept Daniel’s body preserved within her family
mausoleum, which is both touching and a bit creepy. However, we also learn through flashbacks
that Regina’s original intent of learning magic from Rumpelstiltskin was
because she was hoping to find a way to bring Daniel back. But Rumple informs her that ‘dead is dead,’
and refuses to teach her anymore. Thanks
to Jefferson/the Mad Hatter, who makes surprise reappearance in this episode’s
flashback, Regina learns of the existence of Dr. Frankenstein, who lives in a
different world. Using a heart taken
from Cora’s collection, Dr. Frankenstein attempts to resurrect Daniel. Now, I find this a bit risky in general. Regina even states straight out that she has
no idea who any of the hearts belong to, since Cora clearly didn’t believe in a
filing system. Which meant they were
virtually playing a game of Russian Roulette with these hearts. For all they knew, they might have ended up
selecting Abby Normal’s heart. (Yeah, I
know; that joke was probably in poor taste.
My apologies. But I’m not the
only one who feels this way, as David/Charming also clearly is of the same
frame of mind about it when he hears of such a thing in present-day
Storybrooke.) Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein
informs Regina that his attempt to bring Daniel back failed, prompting Regina
to return to Rumpelstiltskin to continue training in magic his way. Which sadly ultimately leads to Regina
practically becoming Cora 2.0. (Regina even admits to having a collection of
hearts like her mother did. So much for
her desire to not become her mother.)
This conclusion is even sadder when we see Dr. Frankenstein failed on
purpose, as Rumpelstiltskin instructed him to do so, in exchange for obtaining
one of Cora’s hearts for use in his famous experiment. It’s this that further proves how much of a
twisted puppet master Rumpelstiltskin is.
He concocted this whole thing to force Regina to continue down the path
of learning dark magic from him. He knew
that doing so would ultimately lead to Regina casting the curse that created
Storybrooke; don’t try and tell me otherwise.

In the
present, Dr. Whale/Frankenstein, who has learned from David/Charming that the
Enchanted Forest still exists, manages to abduct Daniel’s body. It’s here the episode goes absolutely
bonkers. Dr. Whale/Frankenstein manages
to bring Daniel back to life, because this time a) nothing’s holding him back
and b) he’s hoping that by giving Regina what she wants, she’ll return him to
his own world. But the resurrected
Daniel goes berserk. Even rips off Dr.
Whale’s arm. While he gets it back later
by getting Rumpelstiltskin/Gold to magically reattach it, it doesn’t change the
fact that we get an eyeful of his bloodstained dismembered arm lying on a
table. (As the Nostalgia Critic would say: 'you know, for kids!')

Regina
surmises that, much like how David/Charming made his way to the T(r)oll Bridge
after waking up from his coma, Daniel might be making his way to a place he
remembers- the stables. This is a
problem, however, as David/Charming had left Henry there so Henry could bond
with his new horse. What follows is a
rather heart-wrenching scene, in which Regina is forced to pull an Old Yeller
on Daniel, whose resurrected body is, from what I can gather, incompatible with
the heart used in Dr. Whale/Frankenstein’s procedure.

We also get
some more grandfather/grandson bonding between David/Charming and Henry, which
is always welcome. For as much
plot-related stuff that this show goes through, which I do enjoy, it’s still
great to see our characters taking the time to actually be a family. Plus we get a nice little Oz reference in the
scene when Rumpelstiltskin is conversing with Jefferson/the Mad Hatter when the
latter delivers a glass orb (which I can’t really remember if it’s served a
purpose yet.) This is the third time Oz
has been referenced in this show. (Well,
four if you count Regina saying ‘I don’t care if they turn me green’ in ‘We are Both,’ which is ironic in itself
considering….well, you’ll see when we get to the second half of season 3.)

First, we
saw a brief glimpse of an illustration of flying monkeys in Henry’s book back
in ‘Snow Falls’. Then, in ‘The
Hat Trick,’ we see a green curtain door in the Room of Doors that is
accessed through Jefferson’s magic hat.
Just makes you wonder if the show writers knew we’d eventually actually
go there.

While all
this is going on, Emma, Mary Margret/Snow, Mulan and Aurora discover the
village of Enchanted Forest’s refuges
has been attacked by Cora during their absence, and everyone living there is
now dead. The only survivor is a man
Mulan recognizes as a blacksmith who had been living among them for some time,
but because of Emma’s lie-detecting ‘superpower’(after Emma messed up last time with the whole ogre + gun incident, it’s was really nice to see her get back to her take-charge state that we saw spring up with Ryan the Embezzler in the pilot and Regina’s apple tree in ‘The Thing You Love Most.’ She was just in her element in this episode, and I do enjoy seeing that), the four women discover that
this blacksmith is actually Killian Jones/Captain Hook, who had been instructed
by Cora to infiltrate their group. Once
he sees that the jig is up, Hook announces that he’s willing to help them
instead and informs them of Cora’s plan to journey to Storybrooke using the
ashes of the magical wardrobe (which Emma had burned two episodes ago) and an
enchanted compass that is located at the top of a beanstalk. Hook offers to help them obtain the compass
before Cora can in exchange for them bringing him back to Storybrooke so he can get his revenge on Rumpelstiltskin. While seeing Hook
interacting with our heroes in this episode is fun to watch, it’s not until the next one that things really get interesting.

About Me

My dream is to move to England one day and write books for children and young adults. I am quite passionate about the environment and will get irritated when I see people throw plastic bottles and soda cans into the trash. I hold a strong love for animals and am greatly upset when I see people killing spiders or buying spring-loaded mousetraps. I am also a Christian woman, but please don't automatically label me as an overly-conservative Bible thumper.
Finally, I am offended by excessive swearing, particularly the F-bomb, which is why you won't see me using any of it in my blog.